Janet and I have learned or relearned some particularly
important things living in Burkina Faso.
Most of the people here are what we in the USA would consider to be poor—very
poor. On the surface that is very
true. While people who work for the
government, nongovernment organizations, or who work in various professions are
economically better off, the average Burkinabé may earn less than three dollars
a day. However, we have also learned
that there are very different types of poverty.
As we walk or drive around the country we always see young
dust-covered children without shoes who may be wearing tattered shorts and
perhaps a tee shirt that is one or two washings away from dissolving into a
handful of fibers. Some of those
children could be struggling to push fifty-five gallon drums of water on small
handcarts over heavily-rutted dirt roads in clouds of dust raised by passing
cars and motorbikes. We know from
experience that most of the children and their families even in our “quartier”
(neighborhood) eat one meager meal a day.
Children whose families can afford the equivalent of $20 or
$30 dollars a year to send one of their children to school for a year may only
be able to do so until the child is old enough to work as an adult in caring
for the farm crops. The family struggles
to raise crops in a land where it does not rain during the nine or ten-month
dry season. When more serious drought
conditions strike, some families resort to eating their seed stores and have
nothing to plant when the short rainy season begins. Then they must search for food such as roots,
seeds, or small animals to eat in the dry brush of the countryside.
Parents work long hours often starting before the blood-red
sun rises and working until many hours after the dust-obscured sun has
set. People here are very industrious
and entrepreneurial. A father may labor
all day under the scorching sun digging ditches in the city, making cement
blocks by hand, making deliveries with a donkey cart and then work as a night guard
for a private home. Many work two or
more jobs. Mothers often work at raising their children which may number five, six,
seven, or more. Often the mother will
leave the oldest child or children in charge of the other children as she works
as a cook or housekeeper for another family or she may sell hand-made items or
simple foods along the roads.
Everyone, even children as young as four years old may have
a job to do. It is not unusual to see a
six or seven-year-old girl with a small infant strapped to her back running
across a busy street choked with huge tractor trailer trucks and hundreds of
motor bikes. In the countryside boys as
young as eight or nine may be responsible for herding cattle as large as small
cars. Children grow up very quickly here
in Africa.
Yet, there are very different types of poverty. Children freely smile, especially at white
strangers who are called “Nasara.”
Children play with whatever “toys” they can find or make. An old bicycle tire or a football (soccer
ball) made from rolled-up plastic bags can entertain a small group of children
for hours. Children almost never play
alone—they usually have a least one friend to play with. Laughter and squeals of joy are recurrent,
especially with others.
Adults are very social creatures as well. They almost always try to work in
groups. There is always much talking and
almost as often there is laughter.
Smiles authenticate the love for friendship and comradery among the
Bukinabé. The Burkinabé love friendship and company. It took me a while to
become accustomed to holding hands with another man while walking along the
road.
There are also many churches in this largely Muslim
country. Churches are as small as a home
or as large as the National Cathedral in the capital of Ouagadougou. The churches we have attended in Burkina
Faso, Mali, Chad, Cameroon, and Ethiopia are usually filled to capacity with
row upon row of worshippers standing for hours in the rear of the church. It is not unusual to have five or six pastors
preaching and as many choirs leading the congregation in joyful worship. Prayers of pastors and individuals in the
congregation fill the service with adoration, thanksgiving, and praise.
Whether Christian, Muslim, or Animist, the concept of
atheism is largely incomprehensible. To
not believe in something, either Jehovah God, Allah, or spirits is like not
believing in the ground upon which one walks or not believing in the air that
one breathes. I was once asked, “How is
it even possible to believe in absolutely nothing?”
As we celebrate Christmas, the day a loving God became man
to call us to a renewed relationship with Him and offer everyone the choice to
spend eternity in His presence if one just believes and trusts in Christ as the
one who can erase all of our sins, turn our thoughts to those things that are
truly important. God is not the most important
thing, He is the only important thing in all of reality. Without Him nothing would exist. There would be no purpose to anything. In Him we have our being.
When we have the blessed opportunity to look into the eyes
of a child who once sat on death’s door step because of malnutrition, but now
coos and smiles, when a withered, emaciated woman receives a couple of bags of
rice and beans and turns to another woman as in need as she and shares half of
what she has just received, when a church celebrates opening a case of Bibles
in long prayers and song, we celebrate God become man whatever the date. There is a material poverty that robs
billions of people of food, clothing, shelter, and a full life. But even in this poverty they can and most often
do find faith, love of family and friends, and loving obedience to the will of
God. In these ways even the poorest are actually very rich.
Then we begin to discover our own dire poverty amidst our
abundant material riches. We have more
food than we need, we each have closets filled with clothes enough for a
family, we live in a house big enough to hold the population of a small village,
and we rent space for possessions that will not fit into our homes. We become painfully ashamed when we think of
trash cans that hold what would be feasts for those who eat one meal a day…or
less.
We are often so caught up in the busyness of each day that
we fail to pray. We fail to thank God
for his protection of our family during the night, we fail to thank Him for each new day filled
with promise, liberty, and a degree of luxury that leaves at least a third of
the world in stunned disbelief. We often
fail to see rain as a blessing rather than a bother of damp clothes or muddy
shoes. We fail to thank God for another
day for each child spared any of the myriad diseases that are deadly in the
developing world but have been eradicated in much of the rest of the
world. Many of us have complained of
having to work in jobs that would cause most of our African neighbors and
billions like them to fall to their knees in thankful prayers to God. We possess so much that we may often suffer
from a poverty of spirit.
I am mortified when I sit at the laptop on which I write
this message and realize that it represents years of some people’s
incomes. I am more than embarrassed when
I realize that my small collection of hand tools is beyond the dreams of my neighbor or
that when I fill our old and rumbling (by American standards) pickup truck with
diesel fuel that I just spent someone’s monthly rent, food allotment, water
cost, and spare change for medicine. I think back six decades and cringe when I
think that the cost of batteries for my few Christmas toys could have fed some
families in the world for an entire week.
It will soon be Christmas again. Gifts will be shared, packages opened, an
abundance of food will be consumed, holiday celebrations will be viewed on
television, families will gather to celebrate and to make new memories, and
warm glows will radiate from countless homes filled with holiday cheer. Not too far from the celebrations and
merriment someone will be sitting alone, perhaps in the cold and dark of an empty
home, in an institution, or under a bridge.
Close to home there will be someone dreaming of the next day’s meal in a
nearby dumpster or trash can. Not too
far away there may be a homeless person bundled against the biting cold
counting on a cheap bottle of some beverage to dull the chill and dreaming of
some past pleasant Christmas only to not wake up Christmas morning.
We talk about the spirit of Christmas. We recall that it was the Magi who gave gifts
to the baby Jesus as angels announced to shepherds that God has become man. Christmas night the cries of millions of
hungry babies will waft around the world and may cry that night for the last
time. Christ told the rich young man to
sell all he had and give it to the poor.
The rich young man walked away sad because he had many possessions.
May we who are indeed very rich ourselves not fail to
comprehend that the joy of the season is not in what we receive, but in what we
give and to whom we give it and from whom we receive so much. We should celebrate the day and give thanks
to God who blessed us with abundant riches.
We rightly gather to share the abundance of a loving God. We remember that God became man that He could
reconcile us with a just and merciful God.
But also remember those who live on the margin’s and knife’s
edge. It was after all the poor about whom
Christ spoke the most. Let us not allow the abundance of our riches make us the
most pitiable of the truly poor this Christmas season.
